Chapter 28 #2
I let his words roll around inside my head, trying to make sense of them.
What kind of internal monster could have overpowered someone like Elis?
I would not have thought the young lord carried anything dark or dreadful inside.
He had seemed to me to be made of nothing but spirit and spark, charm and courage.
But then, I didn’t really know him. Perhaps he did not really know himself. Not until the very end.
“And you, Valtar?” I ask softly after a little while. “Did you see yourself in the dark?”
He nods.
“And what is he like? The dark side of Prince Valtar Skylock, what sort of man is he?”
A growl rumbles in his throat. “Not the sort of man you want to know anything about.”
But he’s wrong. He’s so wrong. I do want to know.
I want to know every side of Valtar—good, bad, noble.
Even murderous. I want him to be real with me, to be open with me.
I don’t like this wall between us. It’s as though the more I’ve come to know him, the more I’ve realized how much he’s hiding… and the more I don’t want him to hide.
“Let me decide for myself,” I say, perhaps more sharply than I mean to.
Valtar’s arms around me stiffen. “But I can’t let you decide, can I?
” he rasps. “Because you’re so trusting.
So open, so earnest. So full of light and life, while I?
I am a creature of destruction. I taint everything I touch with death’s stain.
Even you. Especially you.” His head bends forward, his face buried in my hair for a moment.
I feel the strain in his throat as the next words emerge through his clenched teeth.
“You are so…alive, Rosie. So much more alive, so much more real than anyone I’ve ever known.
And while I know you will—you must—be changed by all the evil of this world, I cannot be the one to do it.
I cannot be the one to corrupt you. I cannot be the one to look into your eyes and see the moment when you realize that… that I am not…”
His voice breaks off, an inarticulate sound of pain in his throat.
I draw back from him a little, peering up into his face.
The scintil he dropped lies where it rolled several feet away, but its faint glow is more than enough for my eyes to discern his face.
Those sharp edges, those deep hollows, chiseled by the hand of a cruel master into the harsh features of a man who walks the edge of monsterhood.
And yet those eyes of his—they are the eyes of a man.
So full of sorrow, gods! I’ve never seen such sorrowful eyes before, not in my whole life.
I didn’t think Valtar capable of expressing such extremity of emotion.
He’s always been so stoic. Even his inexplicable anger last night was carefully controlled, carefully channeled.
But now he gazes at me with such open devastation, it could stop my heart.
I find I want more than anything to ease that pain.
Perhaps I’m not what Alderin needs, not the hope of Belanor or the world.
Perhaps I cannot justify the deaths of my champions.
Perhaps all this pain and suffering is worthless because I myself am worthless—too weak a vessel for the power I’m meant to wield.
But here, in this moment…maybe there’s something I can do.
My fingers release their hold on the front of Valtar’s tunic. They rise, trembling, slip along the skin of his jaw, his cheek.
His breath catches. His black gaze lowers suddenly, focused on my lips.
I lift my chin, my eyelids dropping half-closed. I don’t want to force anything. Not this time. Twice before, we’ve kissed on my impulse. But there is no impulse here; there is only invitation. My lips part as I raise them toward him, and I feel his ragged breath, warm against my skin.
Then, with a faint whisper of “Gods!” he lowers his mouth to mine.
It isn’t much insofar as kisses go. Just the pressure of his lips and my hand resting on his cheek.
Just his arms wrapped around my body, frozen in place.
It’s barely even enough to call it a kiss, and it does not justify the sudden burst of light erupting in my chest, looping in wild circles only to pool in the well of my belly.
It’s strange, confusing, a little frightening even…
and so delicious. Our first real kiss, mutually chosen.
The taste of it, the sweetness of it, is more than anything I could have anticipated.
I feel it in him as well—an answering vibration of spirit, a sense of leaping light. And I know, I know he wants this. He wants it as much as I do, and the triumph of that knowledge makes my lips twist in a smile beneath his.
Then his fingers tighten around my upper arm.
He’s already shaking his head when he draws back, and when his lips withdraw from mine, a verbal “No, no, no” tumbles from his mouth, a sharp contrast to everything I believed I’d felt in him.
I blink hard, staring up into his eyes, startled, unsure.
His gaze holds mine hard for a few breaths, all the sorrow that was there moments ago swept away in a blaze of heat so intense, I feel it radiating off my soul.
It thrills me with something akin to fear, but when I reach for him again, he jerks back.
“No!” he declares, louder this time, pushing me away from him so hard that it hurts. He disentangles his legs and arms, gets to his feet, and staggers back like I’m some cursed thing. “I’m not doing this. I won’t.”
“Valtar?” I gape up at him, my lips still parted with the kiss we shared.
Feeling strangely vulnerable on the ground, I pull myself upright.
My head whirls, my body still aching with the pain of the fire which nearly erupted inside me, but I put out a hand, steadying myself against the wall.
“What’s wrong?” I demand, scarcely able to form the words. “Valtar, please.”
He turns away from me, his head heavy, his shoulders bowed.
I try to take a step toward him, but my body simply won’t move. “Tell me. Am I mistaken? Have I…have I misunderstood what’s happening between us?” I lick my lips, tasting the salt of his kiss with my parched tongue. “Do you not feel what I feel?”
He growls like an animal, shaking his head so that black curls fall across his forehead. Then his eyes flash to meet mine. “Yes,” he snarls, teeth bared. “You are mistaken. There is nothing here, nothing between us. There never can be.”
His words hit like a slap across the face.
Oh gods. Oh gods above and below, how could I have been so stupid?
A gross, squirming sensation replaces all the pleasant hum in my veins, sickening my gut.
Stupid, stupid…and such nonsense! Absolute, utter nonsense, for how does any of this matter in light of all the other hideous things happening, both here and out there in the real world?
Why should I even spare two thoughts for something so trivial, so foolish, so idiotic as my feelings for a dark-eyed stranger?
And yet I can’t seem to help it. I feel as though all the vitality has simply drained from my limbs.
He doesn’t…he doesn’t feel for me what I do for him.
And of course, why should he? We’ve known each other a mere handful of days, and under such extreme circumstances.
Really it’s the circumstances alone which have made me think and feel things I wouldn’t otherwise have tolerated, not even for a moment.
“Oh,” I manage, my voice a limping little thing.
“Oh, of course. Of course, you’re quite right.
And it’s for the best, really, and I shouldn’t have…
I shouldn’t have said anything. Please, just forget it.
Forget it all.” I turn away from him, wrapping my arms around myself.
“I wasn’t thinking clearly. It’s…it’s been a trying day, you know, and then the fire…
No.” I close my eyes, draw a deep breath, hating the way a sob quivers on my lips, betraying me.
“I’m very sorry. Truly sorry, Valtar.” I cannot bear to face him, so I lift my chin, staring down the dark passage before me.
“There. It’s over now. Let’s forget it ever happened, shall we?
” I breathe out again, forcing back telltale tears.
“I’m tired. I…I think it’s time I returned to my rooms. Philippa, you know… ”
I take a step, determined to leave him. Determined to leave this whole miserable moment behind and spend the rest of my existence doing all I can to blot it from memory. I take one step—but not a second.
Before my foot can touch the ground, a hand closes down hard around my elbow. I have just enough time to gasp before I’m pivoted roughly on heel and find myself staring up into two void eyes set in a face of absolute darkness and shadow.
“Gods damn me to hell,” Valtar snarls.
And then he kisses me.
This is no gentle brush of lips, no moment of light dancing and sweet sensation.
He kisses me like a man starved. Like he’s been holding back, standing before a feast of bounty while, little by little, his iron will is chipped away, and nothing remains to hold back the ravenous beast of his hunger.
It’s positively vicious—a kiss with teeth that sends a jolt of terror straight to my gut, where it bursts in tongues of fire.
If I thought I knew what it was to be kissed before, any such ideas vanish in an instant.
This is something altogether different, something which liquifies my spine and melts me into him.
My nostrils fill with the scent of burnt cedar, and my tongue burns with a combination of salt and sweat.
Were it not for his arms around me, for his hands crushing the small of my back and wrapped around my rib cage, I would simply crumble to dust under the force of such an embrace.